metal spike, meet my eye

I’ve noticed that lately my palms and fingertips have been itchy.  They say it means a financial windfall is in the near future if you have itchy palms, but I think I may just have a fungus.

Ronaldo gives a chubby middle finger to everyone who doubted and mocked him as he breaks a World Cup record.

Brian woke up late today, so I drove him to the bus station. As I returned home and got out of my car, a man approached me. Here is my story.

man: (amicably) You drive real good.

me: (still sleepy and unsure of the world) Thanks.

man: I’m trying to catch the bus. Do you have fifty cents?

me: Sorry, no thanks. (strangely, as of late, that is my automatic response when spare-changed.)

man: Okay.

me: (walking up to my house) ….

man: (smiling at me) You should be in Ebony magazine.

me: (now even more unsure of the world) Thanks….Have a good day.

man: You have a really good day, now.

One day in class, we were talking about Asian cultures and I made some comment about “my yellow people.” One of my African-American students blurted out, “You’re not yellow, Miss. You black!” That was a kind of sweet honor that made sense in the context of being able to relate and build trusting interracial relationships, but today is the very first time someone has told me I should be in Ebony magazine. I believe it will be the last time.

Only at 6:30 in the morning, when everything possesses a distinct surreal quality, can something like this occur.

I'm drowning in nostalgia. (best of) New Order is playing on my stereo, and I could almost cry. It's been so long, and crikey, Peter Hook is fucking amazing. I know all bass players say he's the reason they picked up their instruments in the first place (he and Fred Erskine, of course), but damn if it ain't true for me. I figured out while driving home today that the music we play is not post-punk, progressive, rock, or what have you. It's post-New Order. I called Claudine up immediately to tell her about my epiphany….I don't know if she was as impressed with my cleverness as I was.

Anyway, I know that most people who consider themselves old school New Order aficionados poo-poo the (best of) selection (to a large extent, so do I), and as a matter of course poo-poo their later albums (as it's always more hip to say that so-and-so's earlier works are really where the magic happened and bemoan the fact that so-and-so have sold out/become stale/etc./etc. later in their careers), but when I stumbled onto "Regret," I couldn't help but get dizzy with delight. It's almost more fitting to listen to that song now, more than ten years later. "It may be I've forgotten the name and the address of everyone I've ever known, it's nothing I regret" and "I was a short fuse, burning all the time; you were a complete stranger; now you are mine" are the perfect tip of the hat/farewell to the pining, angst ridden adolescence this song came to define in retrospect.

And now "World in Motion" is playing, quite fitting as the World Cup starts tomorrow. Ah, footy madness….Be the Reds!…Korea Fighting! I'll have to train myself again to wake up at odd times to catch the games with my dad. On a side note, if anyone wants to watch the matches with me, get in touch.

So if you need me, I'll be sprawled out on the floor, studying the ceiling and listening to New Order as a tribute to the good old (god awful?) days of my youth.